Resources on Palestinian Initiative at the UN

The 2011 session of the United Nations General Assembly is set to open on September 13 in New York City. During this gathering of the global community, the Palestinian Authority is expected to request statehood recognition at the United Nations. There is little clarity and much speculation on what form this request will take and what impact it will have.

In the midst of this challenging scenario, Churhces for Middle East Peace reasserts our deeply held belief that there is an urgent and immediate need for a just and sustainable resolution to the conflict in the Holy Land. While we believe that a vote at the United Nations cannot replace direct negotiations between the parties and a negotiated peace agreement, we also know that the status quo is not sustainable and it is time now to look past punitive measures to how we cotinue to work for a just, secure, and sustainable peace for all. Read CMEP's full statement on the Palestinian's UN initiative.

CMEP has also put together a collection of materials from trusted sources on the Palestinian initiative at the United Nations. These resources offer a combination of procedural and legal details, facts, and analysis of the possible Palestinian actions at the UN and potential results and consequences of those actions.

This document is a technical legal opinion written by Guy Goodwin-Gill, a member of the Faculty of Law at Oxford University and member of the legal team that won the 2004 judgement by the International Court of Justice that found the route of Israel's security barrier illegal. The legal opinion has been cited by several news sources including the semi-official Palestinian Ma'an News Agency. See their August 30 article, "UN statehood bid 'threatens Palestinian rights'" for some additional analysis and commentary on the legal opinion. Mr. Goodwin-Gill also wrote an article on September 7, answering some of the questions raised about his brief, which was published in the legal journal Jurist.